In Madness Such As This
by KMSaum
Summary: Nick wakes up to music and Ellis gets embarassed. This story is a peek at a moment of down-time in the lives of the L4D2 survivors. One-Shot.


** This is a...fluffy? Pointless?...idk, it's a little piece I wrote when I got an old song wedged in my brain. What ensues is just a peek into a moment of down-time for the L4D2 survivors. Please R&R, for good or for ill!**

Also, I don't own L4D2 or the snippets of song you find herein.

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It's as he's taking a much-needed catnap after his watch shift that Nick stirs just the faintest bit into consciousness…just enough that he realizes he's waking up and fights it. He rolls over and pulls his blazer up over his head as he tries to block the wakefulness out and, with a satisfied sigh, the conman settles back in to snatch as many winks as the situation will allow. On the brink of truly passing back out, though, what sounds like the beginning bit of a song wafts through his brain.

"_One hand reaches out_

_And pulls a lost soul from harm"_

The rhythm is slow, almost mournful, accompanied by the strumming of a guitar. Since when did he dream in full instrumental? Not just the sound of the guitar, but vocals to boot? Half-awake or not, he couldn't remember his dreams ever having music before. Maybe the stress and the zombie stink were finally getting to him? _Damnit,_ he thinks, and longs for a number of things he's not likely to find anywhere soon.

"_While a thousand more go unspoken for_

_And they say "what good have you done by saving just this one?"_

The guitar is acoustic and he hates that softy shit, give him rock over mellow any day of the goddamn week. Even his dreams are shitty nowadays, ruined from the blissful blankness he used to get from a good bottle of scotch.

"_It's like whispering a prayer _

_In the fury of a storm"_

Nick pinches his eyes closed as thunder rumbles overhead, nature singing along with the voice in his head. Seriously, when the _Hell_ did he start dreaming with a country music soundtrack?

"_And I hear them saying _

_You'll never change things_

_And no matter what you do it's still the same thing_

_But it's not the world that I am changing_

_I do this so...this world will know_

_That it will not change me."_

_Eh, the lyrics are nice_, he decides, then realizes he shouldn't be thinking if he's asleep. "Damn it all," he grumbled, finally sitting up to the embrace of concrete and darkness beset by the heavy loom of humidity ready to condense into. He's awake whether he wanted to be or not and it doesn't appear sleep's coming back to him anytime soon. Leaning up and appraising the safe room around him, he finds Coach and Rochelle both still sleeping soundly nearby and wonders with a snicker how the older man's snoring doesn't phase Rochelle anymore—or any of them, frankly—and hasn't for awhile now. Not even the lack of anything _resembling_ a mattress for days can deter them from sleep when they reach each new safe room, staggering from weariness and worse. The lights are still off in their temporary haven, coloring the floor a hazy sunflower gold reflected from the streetlights outside. Silently relishing in a broad stretch, Nick hears the tune again.

"_This heart still believes _

_That love and mercy still exist…"_

The strumming stops abruptly and so does the singing; a gunshot, then two, punctuate the night air in a dark mockery of wherever that song is coming from. He's sure a brain cell or ten gets splattered as the gun sounds another time and an inhuman gurgling dies abruptly in the night. Not thirty seconds later, though, the quiet voice starts up again, guitar thrumming softly in harmony with it.

"_While all the hatreds rage_

_And so many say_

_That love is all but pointless_

…_in madness such as this."_ A tuneless chuckle breaks the end of the line, resuming a moment later.

"_It's like trying to stop a fire_

_With the moisture from a kiss."_

Nick stands with a grunt, back nearly immobile from sleeping on the concrete floor. _I'm too old for this shit,_ he muses, brushing dust off himself despite the much worse things coating his suit and skin. It's as he ventures towards the stairs at the other side of the safe room that he realizes it must still be Overalls' turn to guard the door—"safe" or not, they took no chances. What must be the chorus picks up again as Nick's eyes adjust to the one light still shining at the base of the stair.

"_And I hear them saying _

_You'll never change things_

_And no matter what you do it's still the same thing_

_But it's not the world that I am changing_

_I do this so...this world will know_

_That it will not change me."_

It _is_ the mechanic that's singing and playing the damn guitar, a big tan acoustic thing not at all like the red and white one that Coach was swinging the previous day. He'd been twirling the thing like a madman when they'd been waiting for the chopper, clearing the horde from the corner of the stage they'd been holding with the guitar. He'd bashed it over a hunter's skull and cracked bone and acrylic both as the Midnight Rider's pre-recorded voices blared all around them.

Come to think of it, Coach and Rochelle both had commented on Ellis carrying the clunky item around when he had yet to use it to beat zombie brains in. The youngest of the four had been relying on his other weapons instead of the instrument he'd found in an abandoned bedroom, magically unharmed despite the gore all over the place.

The strumming gets a mite louder and so does the voice, indulging the next two lines and long held note at the end.

"_As long as one heart still holds on_

_Then hope is never really gone…"_

Nick folded his arms across his chest, listening silently and unbeknownst to the mechanic. While Ellis sang and played at the foot of the stairs his hunting rifle sat propped against the steps beside him and the guitar stings thrummed quietly beneath his fingers. The conman leaned against the doorway, waiting until the long note finished before pointedly clearing his throat.

Ellis jumped; the guitar belched a horrible set of nothing-notes as he lost his train of thought as well as the chord. He turned and, seeing Nick, his cheeks flushed a brilliant shade of crimson.

"Aww shoot Nick, you damn near scared the shit outta me!" Ellis chuckled, dropping his voice to avoid waking the others. Nick shook his head.

"Serenading the stiffs, Overalls?" Another embarrassed smile.

"Naw….well, yeah, kinda, I s'pose, if you want to think of it like that." The younger man glanced out the door to check that the coast was still clear. "I don't play loud and it helps pass the time, y'know?"

There was a long moment of silence. Ellis scratched his head, stealing furtive glances to see why Nick was still standing at the top of the stairs.

"I'm awful sorry I woke you," he ventured finally. The other man shrugged, descending the stairs and choosing a spot to recline where he could see out the grated door to the outside world they'd be back out in before long. "I didn't think I was bein' loud…"

"No…I mean, you weren't. You didn't wake me." Outside the sky was lightening behind the storm clouds, visibly orange despite onset of more spattering rain. "Jesus, kid, how long were you on watch?" That guilty smile Nick had come to recognize in the past few days broke across Ellis's face and he shrugged a little, not meeting the older man's eye.

"I just figured, y'know, I wasn't all that tired and that I'd just stay up, since hrrrr—" a yawn broke his practiced speech and Nick couldn't help but sneer at the blush that crept into the hillbilly's cheeks as he went on, "…just figured y'all could use some extra sleep is all." Nick shook his head, marveling at the stupidity and touched in spite of himself.

"You know you're going to get killed because you're going to be too tired to pay attention, right?" Ellis smiled bashfully and fiddled with his hat.

"Naw, I used to go to work without sleeping all the time and I never made no mistakes. Well," he thought about it a moment, "...no big mistakes anyhow. There _was _this one time, Keith and I were trying to get this four wheel drive to stop squeaking when it shifted. It was more like screeching, true be told, and--"

"Ellis?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut the hell up."

"All right."

The two of them sat for a few long moments, watching the sky darken as more black clouds rolled in over their field of view.

"Reckon we oughtta wake Coach and Ro?" The gambler pondered that and—upon a loud grumble from his back and legs from the running they'd done the previous day—replied:

"Nah, let 'em sleep a little longer." More silence ensued and Ellis, true to his nature, broke it into a million pieces.

"You want me to play another song?" Nick looked at the younger male, eyes eager in the waning light, and bit back the cutting remark he'd been ready to launch. He let himself sigh instead.

"Sure, what the hell. You know anything that isn't country?"

"Taught myself, so…mostly I just know Garth Brooks." Nick rubbed his eyes, leaning back against the concrete stairs with his arms propped behind his head.

"Goddamnit," he grumbled, but there was no fire in it. "You don't know _anything_ else?"

"Ehh…I may be able to manage 'Smoke on the Water.'"

"You know what, play whatever." A moment, then, "—just make it a fast one, Overalls. You'll put me and the zombies back to sleep with another one of those slow numbers."

"Okay then." He was excited; still, Ellis was quiet for a minute or two—blissfully so, Nick thought—trying a few practice notes on the guitar. He was more focused than the gambler had ever seen him, concentrating on trying to remember a sting of pointless notes when usually he was carefree and compulsive when they were fighting for their lives. Ellis's face lit up as his boot began to tap and his fingers began to dance along the neck of the guitar, launching into an up-beat and much quicker song.

_She was born to a mother trucker, raised behind the wheel_

_And you can blame it on the highway for the way she can't sit still…_

Coach and Rochelle awoke half an hour later to the sound of a guitar, jubilant singing, and the _clunk-kaPOW _of gunshots through the safe room door.

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-fin-

PLEASE R&R!!

A/N: "The Change" and "Rollin'" are two lovely songs by Garth Brooks. (Don't playa-hate just 'cuz it's country, GB has an awesome voice and his upbeat stuff plays like rock and roll.) I like most types of music so....yeah.


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